


Ease

by ConceptaDecency



Series: This Life [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29943291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConceptaDecency/pseuds/ConceptaDecency
Summary: It's a year since Ziyal learned that Garak could never be the man she wanted him to be, but is he putting his life on hold for her sake? He'd better not be.
Relationships: Elim Garak & Tora Ziyal, Jake Sisko/Tora Ziyal, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: This Life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2202168
Comments: 18
Kudos: 84





	Ease

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to [This Life Flattened Against the Wall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29742204).

“Garak?”

Ziyal’s soft voice filled the cavern, pleasant and soothing, like the scented steam drifting up from the geothermal spring in which they were both immersed up to their shoulders. 

Slow drops of condensation from the white stalactites high above plipped into the pool, sending echo after echo round the chamber. Garak rolled his neck slowly, delighting in the looseness the heat brought to his muscles, before stirring himself enough to answer. 

“Yes?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” 

His eyes didn’t fly open, precisely, but his lids did lift enough to reveal two slits of blue, and he turned his head a little towards her, which was enough for anyone who knew Garak well to know he’d been taken aback by the question. 

“That isn’t the sort of thing asked in polite society on Cardassia, my dear,” he said languidly.

The warm water swished against the granite side of the pool as Ziyal shifted to face him and rested her head on her arm. “We aren’t on Cardassia. And you and I’ve gone way beyond polite society.”

“Hmmph. Unfortunately.” He wouldn’t have teased her like this a year ago, as it would have been neither polite nor appropriate in those circumstances. “I could ask why you think now is the right time to ask such a personal question.”

“You could, but you won’t, because you know as well as I do that it’s been a year.” 

“Has it? I hadn’t realised. A year certainly flies when you’ve experienced as many of them as I have.” 

Ziyal’s snort rebounded round the holographic cave. “A year is long enough, Garak. If you were waiting for my sake.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, a gesture that would have been awkward and fraught a year ago, but now, fortified with the correct knowledge and with time, was symbolic of nothing more than deep friendship. “ _I’m_ fine.”

“You already know the answer, my dear. If I did have a boyfriend, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to keep that fact from you.”

“No, probably not,” Ziyal conceded, though there was some small amount of doubt as to the veracity of that statement and they both knew it. “Not if he were here on the station. But you might have someone waiting for you. On Cardassia, maybe.”

Garak leaned his head back on the rock edge of the pool and closed his eyes. It was a gesture of openness and intimacy, exposing his bare neck and chest like this, and, from Garak, a signal that whatever he was about to say would have a thread of truth that could be teased out, if one knew the right way to pick at it. 

“There’s nobody.” 

“Nobody on Cardassia.” 

“No.”

“Somewhere else?” 

“Ziyal, these are very personal questions.” 

“Tell me to stop if you don’t want me asking them,” she said. Garak had problems with directness, but even he could respond to a direct instruction if the situation absolutely required it.

“What’s this I hear about you and young Jake Sisko?” 

“Oh, come on, Garak! That’s a pretty obvious dodge.” Garak, eyes still shut, couldn’t see Ziyal reddening, Bajoran-style, but she knew that he knew it was happening. “You’re better than that.” 

“Is it only my personal life that’s to be dissected? That hardly seems fair.” 

“Yes, it is, and no, it’s not. But you’re always telling Doctor Bashir — and me — that Cardassians don’t believe in fairness, so you’ve only got yourself to blame if that argument won’t work. So let’s get on with it.” 

Garak sighed a sigh as heavy as the crystalline stalactites that pierced the darkness of the cave, and just as genuine. "Pray continue the interrogation."

“So you've never had a boyfriend?” 

“No.” 

“Or a partner? Someone important?”

“ _You_ are someone important.” Garak cracked an eye as he said this, and regarded her with protective caution. This was another thing he would, _could_ not dare say a year ago. Or even more recently than that. It would have been too painful for her up until perhaps a month or two ago, even knowing, as she did, that on a fundamental level he couldn’t love her like that. But the blaze of her irrational, unrequited passion had been slowly burning itself out over the months, with the remaining soreness soothed recently by the balm of the company of another very charming man, who'd made it clear that he absolutely was interested in her that way. And now that there was no scope for misunderstandings or leadings on or dashed hopes and dreams, Ziyal and Garak had found themselves even closer than would ever have been possible before.

“Pshh.” Ziyal flipped the water with her fingertips, sending a gentle spray in Garak’s direction. “You know what I mean.” 

Garak, satisfied that he had not re-opened an old wound, closed his eye again and stretched his legs into the rock pool’s centre, where the heat was the most delicious. “There was one man.” 

“On Cardassia?”

“On Romulus.”

“You loved him?”

“Not exactly.” 

“You still love him.” Garak would give up the truth, such as it was, sometimes. If the right questions were put to him. 

“He’s dead, Ziyal.” This was said with no trace of acrimony at her prying, or sadness, but as a bare fact.

"I'm sorry," she said. Not for asking the question, but for Garak's sorrow.

"It was a long time ago."

"Is he the reason you still haven't said anything to Doctor Bashir?"

Garak shivered and pulled his shoulders under the water, but he didn't open his eyes. "I'm not sure what you think I should say to Doctor Bashir."

"Well, you could tell him how you feel about him."

"He knows how I feel about him. I tell him all the time."

"Garak..." Ziyal rolled her eyes.

"I feel he's arrogant and naive."

"You should tell him how you really feel."

"That is how I really feel."

"Yes, fine, I know. But you should tell him the rest."

"Ziyal..."

"If you were waiting in order to protect _my_ feelings, you don't have to. I'm over you, you know." This last bit was teasing, and to tease him about this was a relief. Only in the last few months had she been able to acknowledge to him in words the extent of her humiliating crush, or that she'd had one on him at all.

"My dear young woman, I would never presume you to be so delicate that I would curtail my own love life in order to preserve your feelings," Garak said curtly, but they both knew that he absolutely would.

"Good. Then you have even less reason not to tell Doctor Bashir you're in love with him."

"Ziyal, even if I were, what would a young man like Doctor Bashir possibly do with that sort of information?"

"Oh, I don't know. Act on it? He's clearly in love with you, you know."

"Nonsense."

"Why is it nonsense? Is it so hard to believe that someone could love you?" Though he still had his eyes closed and couldn't see her, Ziyal fixed Garak with the don't-argue stare she'd used effectively on some of the older Cardassian men in the Breen prison camp. It would come through in her voice, this she knew.

There was a beat. She had him. 

Garak opened his eyes, wide, all pretence of laziness gone. “One might, on examining the parties involved, consider it unlikely to happen more than once," he said. Then he inhaled and slipped himself smoothly and completely under the water's surface. 

"Sentimental coward," Ziyal said, with fondness, to the empty cavern. She was stronger than people gave her credit for. She would have been perfectly capable of taking the indirect insult of Garak declaring himself unlovable, or Bashir a fool for loving him, but Garak was unable to inflict it upon her. 

"Is it time to go already?" she asked, once Garak had resurfaced, round droplets rolling over his water-repellant fully-Cardassian hair and rivulets coursing down his scales. 

"A few minutes more, perhaps," said Garak, unwilling to concede entirely to Ziyal's conversational manipulation.

"If you're certain. I know you're meeting Doctor Bashir later and I'm sure you need time to get ready."

"There's more than enough time." Garak combed his hair back into place with the fingers of his left hand. "Now, my dear. Far too much of our conversation has centred on me today. I insist you tell me about you and Mr Sisko." He gave her a proud smile. "Is your young friend entirely aware of what he's getting into?"

**Author's Note:**

> I imagined a lot of different outcomes to This Life Flattened Against the Wall, but in none of them did Ziyal reject Garak for being a Reflector (gay, in Bajoran parlance, a term created by Author376 in their fic [Perception](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853549)). This is a direct sequel in which, a year on, they are closer than ever, and I didn't really choose to focus on homophobia, internalised or other, or Ziyal or Garak's pain, because this cosy idea spoke to me first. Who knows, maybe I'll write more when I'm in the mood to make them suffer a bit. (And, not that I would presume anyone else would be inspired by my silly ideas, but if anyone were, they would be more than welcome to write or draw their own thing; that's the beauty of fan fiction and fan art.)
> 
> Comments, kudos, theories about what happened in that year and what will happen next, all are welcome!


End file.
